Social Structure, Stress, and Mental Health: Competing Conceptual and Analytic Models

Aneshensel, C. S., Rutter, C. M., & Lachenbruch, P. A. (1991). Social Structure, Stress, and Mental Health: Competing Conceptual and Analytic Models. American Sociological Review, 56(2), 166-178.

A sociological model for the mental health consequences of social organization is distinguished from a sociomedical model for the social etiology of particular disorders. Both models use stress to explain associations between social placement and disorder. These models are not interchangeable, despite apparent similarities, but researchers frequently apply the sociomedical model to sociological questions. Discrepancies between models are illustrated with survey data collected from a community sample of adults. We demonstrate that gender differences in the impact of stress are disorder-specific and do not indicate general differences between women and men in susceptibility to stress